Dr. Richard Liantonio
February 18, 2024 Year B, First Sunday in Lent Today is the first Sunday in Lent, a time to recognize, confess, and repent for one’s sins. But if we’re honest, increasingly in our culture, the language of sin and repentance is losing meaning. Someone can stand on a street corner with a “repent or perish” sign, and tell people that they’ve gotta “turn or burn” but what does that even mean? What significance does that communicate to anyone who isn’t an insider? When words lose their cultural resonance, our task is not simply to double down on the use of traditional terminology. Instead, we can take the opportunity to reflect afresh on what these words mean, what concepts these words point to in the Scriptures, and how we, with our many repetitions of these words, may have drifted from our Scriptural anchoring. We may find our concepts are indeed too small, an impoverished shadow of that to which the Scriptures point. We may discover that though we repeat these words believing them to be important, they have lost meaning to us as well. Language of sin in American culture often centers around certain hot-button issues. In a 2015 Pew Research survey, up to 4-5 times as many Americans believed terminating a pregnancy or engaging in homosexual behavior was a sin, than people who believed acquiring many more possessions than you need or living without regard for environmental destruction was a sin. But what would make any of these behaviors a “sin?” Is “sin” simply a list of things god doesn’t like? Is repentance simply stopping the activities on god’s “bad list” and doing the items on the “good list?” The central message of the gospel reading from Ash Wednesday is that activities which are top candidates for gods “good list,” prayer, fasting, and charitable giving can be done in a way that misses the central good for which these practices aim. Jesus’s point is not that we should do prayer, fasting, and giving, but that they can be done wrongly. So there is a deeper logic to Jesus’s ethic. To understand Jesus's logic of sin and repentance, we turn to today's Gospel and will attempt to tease out four enigmatic phrases. Take out your service leaflet so you can see the words with your eyes. We will focus on the final sentence of our Gospel reading. Mark recounts Jesus’s ministry of preaching as him saying only one sentence: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” Obviously when Jesus preached, he said more than one sentence. Maybe some of you wished my sermon was only one sentence. But this one sentence appears to encapsulate the core of Jesus’s message. As we look at these phrases we should reflect on whether these are at the core of our message, whether they are at the core of our understanding and articulation of the gospel. First Jesus says, “the time is fulfilled.” The time is fulfilled, or perhaps better translated “the period of time has been fulfilled,” or completed. The phrase is so short, it’s easy to move on to the next one. Jesus seems to assume his audience knows to what he is referring. In some of Israel’s prophets, there is a concept of dividing time into two eras. The present age, is one in which evil prevails. This is the age when injustice is rampant, when war and violence destroy human and animal life, when hatred assaults human dignity, and poverty undermines human well-being. The prophets however spoke of a time when humans would practice war no more. They would beat their swords into plow-shears and their spears into pruning hooks. They would take their weapons and melt them down into instruments of agriculture. That which riddles the world with death and destruction would give way to that which cultivates life and fosters flourishing. People would decisively and definitively turn from their drive to destroy life and their indifference to suffering. The injustice, hatred, division, poverty, and despair that characterizes the world would experience God’s redemption and be transfigured. A new age would emerge, characterized by justice, wholeness, dignity, equality, and joy. When Jesus says “the time is fulfilled,” he is saying something very, very radical: The old age has ended. What the prophets have spoken of is now here. The time of hatred, violence, war, injustice, poverty, and despair has come to an end. The next phrase is “The Kingdom of God has come near.” The Kingdom of God has come near. This phrase is often misunderstood. The Kingdom of God is not up in heaven and neither is it the church. Also contrary to a popular misunderstanding, the “Kingdom of God” is not “within you,” or within any other individual. It may be better to translate the term “Reign” instead of “Kingdom,” as it does not refer to a place, but rather to a time period in which God reigns. By analogy, I could say “the reign of Elizabeth is completed. The Reign of Charles has come near.” The reign of Charles is the period of time when Charles is the ruler of the British Commonwealth. Likewise the “kingdom or reign of god” is the period of time when God is the ruler. As Christians we may be accustomed to jargon like “god is in control” or “God’s will always happens,” but these ideas would be very strange and very foreign to many of the bibles characters and authors. God’s will is for all living creatures, including humans, to flourish. God’s will is for the experience of peace, wholeness, happiness, and security to fill planet earth. When this occurs, we say that God’s will has happened. This contrasts with struggling to find some mysterious divine will when all sorts of terrible events happen. God’s will is that wars, violence, hatred, enmities, divisions, and injustices cease and are replaced by peace, love, wholeness, justice, and joy in every area of society. When biblical authors speak of “God’s kingdom” or “God’s reign,” they mean the period of time in which this happens. And when Jesus says the reign of God is at hand, he means this era of peace, love, wholeness, justice, and joy is beginning even now in his life and ministry, and eventually through his death and resurrection. Next Jesus says “repent.” This is a key word for the Lenten season. What is critical is that Jesus’ message of repentance is not set within a framework of so-called “morality.” Repentance for Jesus is not simply about “stopping being bad and starting being good.” Jesus’ message of repentance centers on the reign of God – the period of time when the rule of evil, violence, war, injustice, and poverty is overturned, and peace, love, wholeness, justice, and joy prevails. Repentance is a total reorientation of convictions, values, practices, and social affiliations that reflect this coming Kingdom. Jesus’s message was not “repent so you can get to heaven,” “repent so you can be in relationship with god,” “repent so you can be a good person.” It was “repent because god is renewing and restoring the world.” Are you going to clamp down and preserve the old world or are you going to be part of bringing about the new world? Are we struggling to maintain the old world of death and destruction, of violence, hatred, and self-preservation, the old world where fantasies of ethnic superiority turn neighbor into enemy, where indifference to human and creaturely suffering perpetuates the endless string of misery? Are your convictions, values, practices, and social affiliations oriented toward and shaped by the new world which has no place for hatred, war, violence, injustice, and poverty? This is the repentance to which Jesus calls us. Not get better so you can go to heaven. Rather, join me in creating heaven on earth. We then can understand sin, not simply as the items on God’s bad list, but rather, those convictions, values, practices, and social affiliations that remain indifferent to the suffering, violence, and injustice of the old order, or worse, actively work to ensure their dominion. Finally, we return to when Jesus says to “believe the good news.” Believe the good news that God is reshaping earthly existence, bringing earth’s history into an era of transformation and change, where the old order of things passes away and God makes all things new. But if we’re honest, believing this can be very, very hard. Perhaps this is more pointedly so in the days following a mass shooting in our very own city, just blocks from this building. 22 people were injured, more than half of them children. Two people remain in critical condition. One person, who by all accounts was a beautiful soul, had their life cut short in their prime. We pray for the repose of the soul of Lisa Lopez-Galvan and for the recovery of all those suffering injuries, trauma, and loss. How can we believe God is renewing and restoring the world when the reign of violence and death seems alive and well—when indifference to human suffering is palpably present? In the Eucharist we encounter the body of Christ who has experienced the fullness of the world’s evil, hatred, violence, and death itself. Yet this same body rose from the dead. Jesus Christ passed over from death to life and in himself began the Exodus from the reign of evil, hatred, and death to the reign of justice, love, and life. The risen body of Christ we receive in the Eucharist is a token, a real true piece of the new world God is creating. This token of the new world we receive in the Holy Eucharist cries out for more. It cries out for us to become a constant disturbance, a constant annoyance to those who refuse to repent of their allegiance to the status quo. It creates a resolute insistence that sets us against the grain of this world. We refuse to accept circumstances as they are. We refuse to accept the permanence of gun violence. We refuse to afford senseless terror and violence a position of normality. We set the vision of a renewed and restored world before our eyes and refuse anything to the contrary. “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” The reign of death, violence, and hatred is coming to an end. God’s reign of life, justice, and love is beginning. Forsake your allegiance to the old world, believe this new world is beginning, and follow Christ in making it happen. Leave a Reply. |
The sermons preached at St. Mary's Episcopal Church, Kansas City, are posted here!
Archives
April 2024
Categories
All
|
To the Glory of God and in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary
St. Mary's is a parish of the Diocese of West Missouri, The Episcopal Church, and the Anglican Communion.
Address1307 Holmes Street
Kansas City, Missouri 64106 |
Telephone |
|